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chapter 22 Summary and Conclusions Payson Sheets Introduction The Cerén Research Project has dedicated itself to understanding household and village life during the middle of the Classic Period. Located in a volcanically active area of the monsoon tropics, the Cerén site has taught us much about commoners in the southern periphery of Maya culture. In order to investigate the Cerén village, buried deeply by the eruption of Loma Caldera Volcano, it has been necessary to involve numerous other disciplines and specialties with archaeology, including volcanology , ethnobotany, geophysics, and artifactual and architectural conservation. These research activities are integrated to a public outreach and educational program that includes an on-site museum, trained guides, educational pathways, and involvement of the contemporary community of Joya de Cerén. The overarching theoretical framework that guides and informs research is human ecology, as peoples and their cultures adapt to the beneficial and detrimental aspects of their environments. A more specific body of theory that assists in inferring human behavior from the material culture is household archaeology, a thriving subfield of archaeology. Summary of Research Accomplishments This summary of research accomplishments includes the initial seasons of 1978, 1979, and 1980 and emphasizes the major seasons of 1989, 1990– 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1996. volcanology and geophysics Beginning with volcanology, Dan Miller (Chapter 2) and his colleagues have shed considerable light on the nature of the eruption that buried the village only 600 m away. The eruption was caused by the hot magma working its way upward in the Loma Caldera fissure and coming into contact with water of the Río Sucio. A mild earthquake gave some warning but would not have caused abandonment of the village, given the frequency of earthquakes in this area. I suspect the initial loud hissing steam emissions frightened villagers sufficiently to cause them to flee, as we have yet to find anyone killed by the eruption.The eruption really began with a massive series of steam explosions that deposited finegrained , moist ash at about 100°C on the village and surroundings, which resulted in what we call Unit 1. That was followed by Unit 2, a dry phase of airfall materials, including larger pieces that were hotter than 575°C as they fell (Hoblitt 1983). When the large pieces—the lava bombs—penetrated thatched roofs, they caught the underside of the roofs on fire. The tops of the roofs did not burn because they were coated with moist Unit 1 tephra. Unit 3, a thick deposit composed of many fine-grained moist surges, accumulated on top of the burning roofs and collapsed them. It rained heavily at least twice during Unit 3 deposition.The remaining eleven Loma Caldera layers are alternating steam explosion surges and airfall deposits that continued until the village was buried by some 5 m of tephra and then forgotten for 14 centuries. Four geophysical exploration instrument sys- 198 payson sheets tems have been utilized at Cerén since 1979 in the attempt to detect structures or other cultural features buried below some 5 m of volcanic ash. The focus here is on the two most effective instruments, resistivity and ground-penetrating radar. In the early years of research, resistivity was the most successful, detecting buried buildings as M-shaped anomalies. Resistivity is relatively simple to operate and interpret, and works best in the rainy or early dry season. Ground-penetrating radar instrumentation and software have improved in recent years, and it is now the system of choice. In contrast to resistivity, ground-penetrating radar works best at Cerén toward the end of the dry season. As Larry Conyers and Hartmut Spetzler point out (Chapter 3), ground-penetrating radar is capable of subsurface three-dimensional imaging, assuming the person conducting a survey does thorough calibrations in the field, knows how to handle the very complex instrumentation and data processing, and can do extensive field verification. Both resistivity and ground-penetrating radar detected Structures 2, 3, and 4 as anomalies, and they have been excavated. Over twenty anomalies that range from highly probable to possible structures have been detected by both instrument systems but have yet to be excavated. The recent improvements in ground-penetrating radar have allowed Conyers to map the Classic Period landscape and to detect not only structures but the civic plaza, patios in households, and other more enigmatic features that will require excavation to understand. A major result of ground-penetrating radar surveys south...

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